VCU news

By Megan Schmidt

The Virginia Commonwealth University Grace Street Theater hosts the second night of the fourth annual RVA Environmental Film Festival on Thursday, Feb. 6, featuring three films that address air pollution, waste and the collapse of bee colonies.

Steven Heinitz, sustainability program coordinator with VCU’s Office of Sustainability, helped to arrange the university’s participation after being sought out by the festival’s executive committee.

“They wanted to make the festival more accessible to the public this year,” Heinitz said. “We thought with VCU’s commitment to sustainability, we’d have a good audience here.”

Additionally, the screening of the documentary “Trashed” coordinates nicely with the kickoff of VCU’s 7th annual Recylemania Tournament, which runs through March 30. The 8-week competition measures recycling figures campuswide against other colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.

This year’s competition is easier than ever for the VCU community. The newly implemented single-stream recycling takes all types of plastic, all colors of glass and generally all paper products. The only non-recyclable items a member of the university needs to worry about are food, liquids and confidential documents.

The film festival is free and open to the public.

Schedule of films at Grace Street Theater:

Thursday, Feb. 6

6:05 p.m.         “The Right To Breathe” (2011)
“The Right to Breathe” captures air quality issues in Southern California from an emotionally powerful and personal perspective.  Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Alexandre Philippe, the 20-minute film is meant to make viewers aware of the serious health effects of air pollution while also inspiring them to take action to help improve our air.

6:36 p.m.         “Trashed” (2012)
Narrated by Jeremy Irons, the film looks at the risks to the food chain and the environment through pollution of our air, land and sea by waste. The film reveals surprising truths about very immediate and potent dangers to our health. It is a global conversation from Iceland to Indonesia between scientists, politicians and ordinary individuals whose health and livelihoods have been fundamentally affected by waste pollution.

8:24 p.m.         “More than Honey” (2012)
Albert Einstein once said, "If bees ever die out, mankind will have only four years left to live." In the past five years, billions of honeybees vanished for reasons still obscure. More than one-third of mankind’s food production depends on pollination by honeybees. This film explores the newly named phenomenon of colony collapse disorder.

The festival began as “The Biggest Picture: Richmond’s First Environmental Film Festival” in 2008, thanks to the efforts of the James River Film Society. It was revived in 2011 by the Sierra Club Falls of the James group and renamed the RVA Environmental Film Festival.

According to the website, the festival’s goal is to offer entertaining and educational films that leave attendees with increased awareness of environmental issues that Richmonders face locally and globally.

“Any age group, anybody, can go to it and get something out of it,” Heinitz said.

Visit the RVA Environmental Film Festival website for more dates and times: http://rvaenvironmentalfilmfestival.com/schedule/

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